


You Make Me Sick Inside

by bimmyshrug



Category: IT (1990), IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Adolescent Sexuality, Alternate Universe - High School, Barebacking, Blood, Blood As Lube, Blood Kink, Blood and Gore, Blood and Violence, Bloody Kisses, Body Horror, Bottom Eddie Kaspbrak, Codependency, Come Eating, Come Sharing, Come Swallowing, Dark Comedy, Dark Richie Tozier, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Degradation, Disturbing Fluff, Disturbing Themes, Dom/sub, Dominant Richie Tozier, Dubious Morality, Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier-centric, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, Explicit Language, Feminization, Fucked Up, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, Graphic Description of Corpses, Homophobic Language, Horror, Humiliation, Hurt/Comfort, I Want That Twink Obliterated, Illegal Activities, Internalized Homophobia, Knifeplay, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Masturbation, Mentions of Rape/ Sexual Assault, Minor Eddie Kaspbrak/Myra Kaspbrak, Murder, Murder Kink, Mutilation, Mutual Pining, Name-Calling, Non-Consensual Somnophilia, Obsessive Behavior, Painful Sex, Possessive Behavior, Psychological Horror, Psychosis, Psychotic Behavior, Queer Richie Tozier, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Rough Sex, Self-Harm, Self-Mutilation, Sonia Kaspbrak Being Terrible, Stalking, Submissive Eddie Kaspbrak, Talking To Dead People, Teenage Losers Club (IT), Teenagers, Top Richie Tozier, Unhealthy Relationships, Unsafe Sex, Urine, Violence, Vomiting, Yandere, disturbing behavior
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:28:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23357797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bimmyshrug/pseuds/bimmyshrug
Summary: DEAD DOVE: DO NOT EATAll Richie ever wanted was to be alone with Eddie. Alone, alone from everyone. He wanted everyone in the world to fuck off and leave them alone, so that Eddie would put his feet in Richie’s lap and giggle that way he did just for him. So he could touch Eddie on his legs and stare at his smile and not be afraid that other people would be mad at him for doing it.------It fucking hurt, it hurt so bad to be away from Eddie. It didn’t matter for how long. He had a constant aching in his chest being near the other boy, but being away from him felt like dying; like some horrible creature with terrible claws had a grip around his heart and refused to squeeze quite hard enough to put him out of his fucking misery once and for all. So he started doing something he really, really shouldn’t have done.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak & Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 88
Kudos: 447





	You Make Me Sick Inside

**Author's Note:**

> [ Come visit my cesspool of degeneracy on Tumblr ](https://bimmyshrug.tumblr.com/)  
> If you wanna join my 18+Discord server, shoot me a DM on Tumblr for the invite link!! 
> 
> THIS FIC IS NOT FOR THE FAINT-HEARTED! HEED THE WARNINGS! All potentially disturbing content/imagery HAS BEEN TAGGED. Please read the tags, and if you see something you don't care to read about, please don't read this fic. That's all the warning I'm gonna do. 
> 
> This fic is my half of an art-exchange with the lovely [ liamann ](https://liamann.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr, who drew my pfp, and art based on my previous works, and also drew artwork for this fic as well! She is so fucking amazing and wonderful and I love her so much, so please go give her some love!! 
> 
> I hope you degenerates enjoy. If not, I hope you find something to read that you do enjoy! 
> 
> Crazy obsessive dom/top feral bastard wolfman Richie Tozier for fucking life OR PERISH. (Or, if you have a different opinion, keep them civil at the very least.)

Richie isn’t sure when he first realized that Eddie is special. He thinks maybe he always knew, since the moment they met, when Eddie ran up to him with his little fannypack, pulling antiseptic and bandages out of the zippered pocket to gently dab at Richie’s bloodied knee. He was lecturing him to be careful on the monkey bars, because “You could fall and crack your skull next time, dummy!”

Richie had been speechless for the first time in his life while watching Eddie’s little hands wipe up his blood and place bandages on his scraped knee. He continued to be speechless when Eddie looked up at him afterward with his little bitch face pulled on and his hands on his hips, staring him down with those big brown eyes that Richie has seen behind his own every time he closes them since that day. He was speechless as he watched Eddie stomp away, and he started planning on how to hurt himself next time Eddie was at the park, so he would come and patch Richie up again.

When he stopped being speechless, all he talked about was Eddie. All the time. Eddie Eddie Eddie.

“Mommy, did you know Eddie’s favorite food is spaghetti? Eddie Spaghetti!”

“Eddie says that you can get sick if you go outside when your hair is still wet, mommy.”

“I’m drawing Eddie a wolf! Wolves are Eddie’s favorite, and he says that there aren’t any in Maine anymore ‘cos we hunted them all, but someday they might come back! Isn’t that cool, mommy? Eddie is so smart, he knows so much stuff about everything!”

He was sitting at the kitchen table and coloring in a picture of a field of flowers to give to Eddie when Maggie finally decided to ask Richie outright how he feels about Eddie, because as his mother, she wanted to support him as young as she could. Plus, you know, it was adorable.

“Mommy, do you think this color is prettiest for the sky? Eddie’s favorite color is blue, did you know that?”

“I did know that, sweetheart, and I think that Eddie will love that color,” Maggie encouraged, wearing one of those smiles she’d get sometimes when Richie talked about Eddie. He always figured it was just because she liked hearing about Eddie just as much as Richie liked talking about him. Which didn’t surprise him; Eddie was the most interesting person Richie had ever met, after all.

“Do you like Eddie, baby?”

He didn’t even pause in his coloring; the question didn’t require much thought because _yeah,_ of course he liked Eddie, Eddie was awesome and so fun to play with and knew everything and he was so, _so_ pretty and nice, who wouldn’t like Eddie?

“Duh.”

“Do you like Eddie the same way you like Piper?” Maggie asked with a casual air, reaching for an orange crayon out of the box for a cluster of tulips in Richie’s drawing.

Richie’s hand paused over a cloud and he made a face, shaking his head violently from side-to-side.

“No, no way.”

“Why not?”

“Because Eddie is... is _cool_ , and Piper is my little sister.”

“So that makes her uncool?”

“Well, no...Piper is cool too, but...but different.”

“So you like Eddie the same way you like Stan and Billy?”

Richie paused again, bringing the blue crayon to his lips. “Um...I don’t know. I guess so,” he shrugged, and Maggie smiled gently at him.

“Or do you like Eddie different from them too?”

“Different. I don’t know. I can’t really explain, I guess. Eddie is just different from all of my other friends, and Piper, and everyone else. He’s just so- so cool, and I just- I wanna play with him all the time, Mommy. I don’t _ever_ want to go home from the park when I get to play with Eddie. I never, ever, _ever_ want him to leave. I want to be around Eddie all the time, he makes me feel the happiest,” he rambled without the language in his lexicon to describe his feelings, and Maggie put a gentle hand on his head, interrupting his speech.

“I understand, baby. I was just wondering, since you treat him differently from your other friends.”

“I do?”

“Yes baby. It’s not a bad thing. Sometimes you have…” Maggie paused, biting her lip slightly in thought. “Sometimes you have friends that you like different than other friends. Sometimes you have friends that you want to hold hands with, and hug a lot, and kiss. And that’s okay,” she paused before adding, “that’s how I felt about daddy, when we were kids.”

“And then you got married?”

“Uh-huh.”

“But I can’t marry Eddie, right? ‘Cos he’s a boy? Boys can’t marry boys.”

Maggie’s smile fell a bit like it did whenever she was giving Richie sad news, and he felt his belly cramp up as she brushed her fingers through his curls.

“No, they can’t sweetheart. But boys can still love each other the way mommy and daddy love each other. And maybe someday they’ll be able to get married, too.”

“But I don’t like Eddie that way, because that would be bad, and I like Eddie the good way.”

Maggie’s hand paused in a tangle on Richie’s head, and she frowned deeply, but not how she usually frowned in front of Richie. This looked like the kind of frown she got sometimes when she was talking to Daddy about how Grandma was doing in the hospital.

“Why would that be bad, Rich?”

“Eddie said so. He said his mommy told him that being married is only for boys and girls and that boys who wanna marry other boys are bad.”

“Sweetheart, boys who like other boys are not bad. The way you feel about Eddie isn’t bad.”

“But Eddie’s mommy said so.”

“Well, Eddie’s mommy thinks a lot of things that aren’t true. Sometimes adults can be wrong, baby. Adults think and say things that are bad or untrue sometimes.”

“So...so it’s okay if I want to get married to Eddie someday?”

“Yes, baby.”

Richie’s little heart started beating so hard in his chest that he felt dizzy, and he could feel his little fist tighten around the crayon in his hand to the point of nearly breaking it.

“I’m gonna spend forever with Eddie, mommy. Forever, for my whole life.”

After that, the _mine_ thoughts started.

It wasn’t exactly all at once, but sometimes, Richie would feel this horrible sizzle inside of him when someone else did things that _he_ was supposed to do for Eddie. When Bill rode Eddie double on his bike, or when Stan held Eddie’s hand, or especially when one of them comforted Eddie when he was sad before Richie got the chance to. This angry little bubble would erupt inside of him, and all he could think was _mine mine mine mine mine mine._

Usually he could swallow it down, because even though he was young, he knew it wasn’t fair. Eddie was allowed to have other friends, and Stan and Billy were Eddie’s friends just as much as Richie was. But Eddie wasn’t allowed to like anyone more than him. Couldn’t _need_ anyone more than him. Richie was his best friend, no matter what, and sometimes he felt like Bill especially was trying to take that away.

But Bill didn’t look at Eddie the same way Richie did, he knew that. He knew Billy probably didn’t want to marry Eddie and kiss him on the lips. He knew Bill was probably still sad about Georgie, and that taking care of Eddie made him feel like a big brother again sometimes.

But that didn’t make it any easier when Eddie fell off his bike and scraped up his elbows, and Bill was on the ground to comfort him before Richie had finished tossing his own bike onto the asphalt.

Eddie was crying in pain, and that was the worst thing in the world. Eddie should never, _ever_ cry like that. Listening to it made Richie’s skin feel like it could burn right off his body.

Richie tried to calm the burning, aching fire in his chest as he listened to Eddie cry and watched Billy cradle him on the asphalt, grabbing _too roughly_ at Eddie’s wounded elbows, and then his attempt at calmness left him in a rush.

Because Eddie was staring up at him with those big brown eyes full of tears, and he was sobbing softly, and when he saw Richie approaching, he pushed Bill away and reached up toward Richie instead.

And something in him snapped. He helped Eddie push Bill out of the way before throwing himself down onto the asphalt as well, dragging Eddie into his lap to cradle his smaller body, all while Eddie sniffed into his shoulder, softly crying “It hurts, Richie, it hurts.”

Stan tried to get the bandages and Neosporin out of Eddie’s fannypack to clean up his elbows, and Richie knew he should probably have let Stan do it, because he was better at that stuff than Richie was, but suddenly, the idea of letting Stan take care of Eddie made him feel sick inside. The idea of letting Stan comfort Eddie, and tell him it would be okay, and hold Eddie’s broken parts in his hands. Letting Stan fix what was wrong with Eddie. He couldn’t do that.

So he cleaned up Eddie’s wounds himself before messily bandaging him up, and the whole time he spent gently dabbing at Eddie’s bloodied elbows and listening to his whimpering that Richie tried to quiet with soft cooing, all he could think was _mine mine mine mine mine._

And it didn’t stop. Every time they’d go anywhere together and Eddie would tuck himself into Richie’s side or reach for his hand, every time they had sleepovers together at Bill’s house and Eddie would curl himself into Richie to go to sleep at night, he couldn’t stop it. He couldn’t think anything else but _mine, my boy, Eddie is mine, he’s mine, he’s mine, he’s my boy._

It got so much worse when they got older, and Sonia started telling Eddie that it wasn’t appropriate for boys to touch like that. _You’re a big boy now, Eddie-bear; big boys don’t cuddle with their friends like that._ Dumb cunt. Stupid fucking dumb old bitch.

It didn’t help that Henry and his friends also said it was weird. _Look at the little girlfriends holding hands! Aren’t you faggots a little old for that?_

Richie could maybe deal with that, if they didn’t especially pick on Eddie. And that was too much.

_Little sissy queer. Girlyboy. Come suck my cock, little fag; I know you wanna see it. Bet you’re good at it, since you spend all day sucking off your little boyfriend._

The little fire that always burned him up on the inside would start to leak out, and all he could think about was picking up the biggest rock he could find and hitting Henry over the head with it, over and over and over, until blood came out of his mouth and his ears, until he could never call Eddie a faggot ever again.

And sometimes he’d _really_ really want to, and maybe he would have, if Eddie didn’t drag him away by the hand so they could hide in an alley or behind a dumpster, and he’d tell Richie it was okay, _They’re just mean, they don’t know anything, they just don’t get it._

 _I just want them to shut up! I want them to fucking_ shut up!

_It’s okay, Richie, it doesn’t matter. Henry is just jealous._

_Why the hell would he be jealous of us?_

_‘Cos… ‘cos I have the best friend ever, and all of Henry’s friends are shitty and smell bad._

_Best... Best friend?_

_Yeah! Duh, you’re my best friend, Richie. My best friend ever._

_You promise? Promise forever?_

_Pinky promise, no crossies._

And that was fine. That was fine for a long time, even, until Henry broke Eddie’s arm. And then it was not fine at all anymore, because Richie should have been there. He should have been there to stomp Henry’s fucking face into mush, to crack his skull against the pavement until his brains ran out of his nostrils. He should have been there to protect Eddie and he wasn’t, and then Eddie started withdrawing from him.

Sort of. They still held hands when they were alone together, but Eddie wouldn’t get close to him like that in front of anyone else anymore. He didn’t say why Henry broke his arm, but Richie thought maybe it had to do with him thinking Eddie was a queer. That’s all Henry really ever seemed to be mad at him for.

Richie spent all of the time that he wasn’t desperately trying to make Eddie feel better pacing in the woods right next to Henry’s house, sometimes going there at night just to think. Think about how easy it would be to climb into his window and hurt him. Hurt him badly enough that he’d need to be in the hospital for even longer than Eddie was. How easy it might be to hurt him so bad that he’d never get better again.

But he didn’t. Because Eddie told him not to. “He isn’t worth it, Richie. He’s just a fucking loser with nothing going for him, and he’s pissed off because he’s getting held back again. Don’t get yourself into trouble over him, please.”

So he didn’t. But it didn’t stop him from pacing still, and picking at the bark on the trees outside of Henry’s house with his fingernails until the tips of his fingers were red and sore. Staring up at his bedroom window, where he knew Henry was sleeping just a few feet away from the glass. Wondering if his dad kept their kitchen knives in a drawer or in a block out on the counter, and how sharp they’d be.

Being away from Eddie became torture like it never was before, and Richie felt a physical throb throughout his entire body when the smaller boy wasn’t around. He found himself so close to begging him not to go after they’d hung out, on many occasions having to physically stop himself from dragging Eddie off of his bike and pulling him onto his own, to take him back to his house and up to his room where they could be alone together.

Because that’s all Richie ever wanted, was to be alone with Eddie. Alone, alone from everyone. He wanted everyone in the world to fuck off and leave them alone, so that Eddie would put his feet in Richie’s lap and giggle that way he did just for him. So he could touch Eddie on his legs and stare at his smile and not be afraid that other people would be mad at him for doing it.

But then, Eddie’s mom wouldn’t let Richie sleep over anymore. _Boys your age shouldn’t be having slumber parties alone. Boys your age shouldn’t be sharing a bed._ She had this look in her eyes when she said it. It said _You’re dirty, stay away from my son._ Fucking stupid old dumb fucking bitch. It’d be easy to hurt her, too. It’s not like she’d be able to run away.

It fucking hurt, it hurt so bad to be away from Eddie. It didn’t matter for how long. He had a constant aching in his chest being near the other boy, but being away from him felt like dying; like some horrible creature with terrible claws had a grip around his heart and refused to squeeze quite hard enough to put him out of his fucking misery once and for all.

So he started doing something he really, really shouldn’t have done. And he knew that. He knew it wasn’t okay to sneak into Eddie’s room at night when he was asleep. He knew that breaking off the lock on his bedroom window when he was in the bathroom earlier that day was a bad thing to do. He knew. But he couldn’t stop himself. It felt like trying to force his heart to stop beating. He couldn’t do it.

He was clumsy the first time, and truthfully amazed that Eddie didn’t wake up to the sound of Richie clamoring in through his window. The smaller boy didn’t even stir in his bed, in fact. Didn’t stir when Richie carefully made his way over to sit in his desk chair across from his bed, either. Didn’t react at all when Richie pulled the chair closer until his knees were touching Eddie’s bed, and he could hear the soft breaths puffing out of his little button nose against his pillows.

And it felt bad. Almost.

He knew he shouldn’t have been doing it. He knew his parents would kill him if they went up to his empty bedroom at his own house right now and found him missing. He knew Mrs. K would chase him out of the house with a shoe in her hand if she peeked into Eddie’s room. He knew the other losers, even, would think it was weird. They wouldn’t understand. Richie didn’t even really understand.

But he thought Eddie probably would, if Richie had asked. Eddie wouldn’t mind. And maybe he should have asked, but he didn’t think he needed to. Eddie always understood. Eddie always knew what Richie needed and wanted and why he did things and always heard him out. So there wasn’t really a reason to ask his permission. Because Eddie wouldn’t mind.

He got really good at it, after a while. Too good at it, to the point where he could make no noise at all while he climbed into Eddie’s bedroom. Mrs. K even had the broken lock on Eddie’s window replaced, and Richie learned how to pop it open from the outside without breaking it. It was easy, after a while.

Too easy, even. And that bothered him. He wasn’t sure why. It’s not like he wanted to get caught, because he didn’t. But sometimes, when he was sitting in Eddie’s chair and listening to him breathe and watching him sleep, he did wonder what would happen if Eddie woke up and saw him there. If he’d scream. If he’d tell Richie to get the fuck out, and that he never wanted to see him again. He really hoped not. He didn’t think so.

And maybe that’s why he started forgetting to put Eddie’s chair back sometimes, and left the window cracked occasionally, and left things in Eddie’s room. Because he wanted to know.

“Hey, I have your sweatshirt, you left it at my house. I’m not… I’m not sure when, I didn’t remember seeing it when you left yesterday, but I washed it and stuff for you.”

“Sorry, I’ve been kind of forgetful lately. Thanks, Eds.”

“It’s no problem. I don’t mind.”

It wasn’t working, which was kind of confusing. If he didn’t know any better, he’d guess that Eddie was being intentionally obtuse. But he did know better.

So he started making noise instead. Just soft ones, because that made it a game. Being too loud meant the game would be over, and really, Richie didn’t want the game to end. But he wanted to see how far he could push it. How noisy and careless he could be until everything came tumbling down around him. But he didn’t want the tumbling, so he couldn’t figure out just why he wanted to play the game at all.

Things didn’t really tumble, they sort of just… trickled. He coughed. He didn’t really mean to, he doesn’t think. It wasn’t something he did intentionally. But he also wasn’t trying _not_ to cough, so maybe he did.

He didn’t panic the way he thought he would when Eddie stirred in his bed, slowly blinking his eyes open to settle his gaze on Richie, where he was perched on top of Eddie’s desk, further away than he’d normally be. He had been pretty early on in his ritual and hadn’t quite made it next to Eddie’s bed yet, and he figured that was probably best. Best for Eddie not to know that he’d slowly been building up the courage to climb underneath his blankets with him over time. By then, he’d only been making it as far as sliding his hands underneath the covers to feel Eddie’s body heat warming his fingers.

“Richie?”

Even the soft, croaking sound of Eddie’s voice wasn’t enough to startle him, and he found himself distantly wondering why that was, considering he’d spent so long panicking about this exact scenario. Panicking or fantasizing. It was hard to tell the difference, sometimes.

“Hey, Eds.”

“What- What are you doing here? Why are you in my room?”

“Just… couldn’t sleep. Rough night. Wanted to see if you were awake.”

That had always been the plan. He’d mapped out this dialogue a million times in his head. Next, Eddie would ask how he got inside, and he’d say the window was unlocked. Then Eddie would ask why Richie didn’t wake him up, and he’d say he hadn’t been there long, and was just about to leave him to sleep. Then Eddie would ask if everything was okay, and Richie would say _of course, Eds. I’ll get out of your hair._

“Well… well you can stay here. If you want to.”

Richie didn’t have dialogue rehearsed for that.

“I- What?”

“If you want to stay, you can stay here. If you don’t want to go home.”

“I don’t… I shouldn’t keep you up. It’s really late, you should get back to sleep.”

“You can come sleep with me.”

But it didn’t sound like that, it sounded like _come sleep with me,_ and Richie’s breath left his lungs all at once. Because this wasn’t allowed. It wasn’t allowed and it hadn’t been allowed for years.

“You sure?”

“Yeah, but take your shoes off first.”

So Richie kicked his sneakers off, and before he was done, Eddie had an arm lifted to pull back the covers, showing Richie the space that he was allowed to occupy. And he did; he slithered into that space as carefully as he could and wrapped his arms around that warm little body before Eddie could change his mind.

Eddie settled against his chest like years hadn’t gone by since he’d last done it, and he curled himself against Richie’s body like he couldn’t hear how rapidly Richie’s heart was slamming against his ribcage. Maybe he couldn’t hear it. But Richie doubted that.

“’Night, Rich.”

“Sweet dreams.”

And it was so much better than feeling Eddie’s heat against his hands. It was better than he remembered holding Eddie to ever be before, and he tried to be subtle about sniffing his hair until Eddie was snoring softly against his chest, at which point Richie took a deep whiff, resisting the urge to crush his nose into Eddie’s scalp to sniff deeper.

And god, the warmth was addicting. It felt like home, like every good feeling Richie had ever had piled up and rolled together in one sensation, manifesting itself as the heat of Eddie’s body against his own.

He wanted to touch Eddie underneath his clothes. He had for a while, truthfully. He thought about it sometimes when he was alone, but they were all fleeting thoughts that never gained any traction. Just _wonder what his skin feels like on his belly I’ll bet it’s soft_ before it’d disperse like mist and disappear, and Richie could almost convince himself he hadn’t thought it at all.

He couldn’t do that with Eddie pressed against him like that. The thoughts tried to disperse after he thought them but they started getting trapped inside of his head as the membrane of his thoughts closed in tighter and tighter, tighter around _Eddie,_ and how Eddie smelled, and how Eddie breathed, and how Eddie would feel underneath his hands in places friends should not touch.

But he never did. He kept his hands to himself, mostly. He just rubbed Eddie’s back and pet his arms and sometimes he’d run his fingers through his hair, but he didn’t do that very often, because the urge to pull was too strong. He wasn’t sure why. But he felt it every time he drug his fingers through Eddie’s soft locks, and something in his brain yelled _pull pull pull._

Eddie acted like nothing had happened the next day, and Richie did the same. He figured it was over now, and he could be okay with that, if he had to be. He could wait a few more weeks before sneaking in again, so Eddie would have time to forget what had happened.

But that’s not what happened.

When Richie walked Eddie home the next day after hanging out in the clubhouse, Eddie had looked up at him through his eyelashes, and he’d bit his pink lip red, and he’d quietly asked, “See you later?”

And Richie thought of playing dumb, because he wasn’t sure what the game was. He wasn’t sure if Eddie expected him to say yes or say no, or say something else entirely. Maybe he was supposed to make a joke. Maybe he was supposed to laugh and say _Good one, Eds! See ya at school tomorrow._ He didn’t think those were the right answers, though, so he didn’t say them.

Instead, he said “Okay.”

It became a routine without either of them verbalizing that it was a routine. Richie would do what he’d been doing for countless nights before that and climb in through Eddie’s window, but now, Eddie would be waiting for him. And instead of slowly creeping his way closer to Eddie’s bed, he’d climb right underneath his covers and fold their limbs together. And he’d lie there and think about what it might be like to kiss Eddie, and run his fingers over Eddie’s back while he did it. He’d wonder what Eddie would do if he let his fingers go lower than that. He’d run his fingers along the hem of Eddie’s shorts and the bottom of his t shirt, thinking about how easy it would be to slip his fingers underneath. Eddie probably wouldn’t even wake up.

And then he’d stop touching Eddie and press his knuckles to his scalp and pull, pull as hard as he could, like he could drag the thoughts out of his head along with the strands of his hair that would come loose under his fingers.

Jerking off helped, kind of, so he did that a lot. He’d do it right before we went to Eddie’s house most of the time, and he’d lock himself in his room and drag his secret stash of magazines out from underneath his bed, and he’d try not to think about Eddie. But he always did, and eventually he stopped trying not to. It was hard sometimes to imagine Eddie like the women in the magazines, but he didn’t know where to get gay porn. They didn’t exactly just leave that sort of thing out where he could lift it, and he didn’t know where to look without being conspicuous.

That made it easier to keep his hands from wandering, but he did eventually decide that he could slide his hand underneath Eddie’s shirt to caress the skin on his belly. That felt okay. He figured Eddie wouldn’t mind anyway; it’s not like he ever woke up, after all. So Richie would carefully slide his hand underneath Eddie’s t shirt and stroke along his belly, and gently rub his fingers around Eddie’s bellybutton, and he’d force himself not to follow the soft expanse of his skin to any part of him that Richie didn’t think he could convince himself it would be okay to touch without permission.

That made it easier to calm down and fall asleep, too, which was nice. Smelling Eddie, touching Eddie’s skin. That’s the only way he ever wanted to fall asleep ever again.

And he’d wake up to Eddie gently shaking him just as the sun was coming up, telling him it was time to go before his mom woke up. And sometimes Richie would lean forward like it was instinct to kiss Eddie’s lips, like that was something they did. It wasn’t; he just fantasized about it so often that it felt like it could be so natural, like he really could give him a kiss on the lips and say _Bye, Eds; I love you._

 _I love you I love you I love you I love you._ Richie wasn’t sure when it first started happening, but once it did, it wouldn’t stop. Being around Eddie was starting to feel just as painful as being away from him, because he had these words burning a hole into his mind every time he looked at the other boy. _I love you, Eddie, I love you, I love you._

God, it fucking hurt. It hurt so bad that he wanted to cry sometimes looking at him. The way he’d blink up at Richie through his eyelashes, and the way he threw his head back and exposed the slender column of his throat when he laughed. Even worse when he laughed so hard that he’d let out one of those cute little snorts through his cute little nose, and Richie would dig his nails into his palms until he could feel his skin breaking underneath them because he had never wanted something so badly in his life. To grab Eddie by his slender shoulders and mash their mouths together and tell him _I love you, I love you so much it fucking hurts, I love you so much I think I’ll die if you don’t say you love me too._

He had to let some of it out. If he didn’t, he was worried he’d do something really bad or really stupid, and he didn’t want to do that. So he dug the pocket knife that his cousin had given him out from underneath his bed, and he did something that was still pretty stupid. Anyone could have seen him doing it, but he had to get it out somehow. If he couldn’t say _I love you_ out loud, he’d scar it into this fucking town forever.

The problem was that after the kissing bridge, he couldn’t stop. He carried the knife with him everywhere, and he’d carve their initials into trees, desks at school, into the stalls in the bathroom, so that it couldn’t be washed away like the permanent marker graffiti there. He’d carve his love into the flesh of anything he could get his hands on.

He even carved it into Eddie’s bedframe one night after he fell asleep. He slunk down onto the ground and crawled underneath his bed and quickly carved a practiced _R+E_ into the wood there, while Eddie slept quietly above him and let his soft little snores fill the air around Richie’s ears.

He felt like he had a little bit of control over himself, at least. It was a constant battle, but he was managing. And he did it successfully for years; for so long that he was sure he could do it for the rest of his life if he had to, quietly leaving pieces of his love in places they shouldn’t be while being Eddie’s friend, because he was Eddie’s best friend. Forever. Pinkie promise.

He never really thought about girls. He didn’t think about guys, either. He just thought about Eddie, all the time. Eddie was the only person he ever thought about kissing and touching like that. He wondered if that made him gay, or if it just made him… focused. _Fixated._ He knew what he wanted. He always had, he always would.

Eddie never seemed to think about girls either, which was good, because Richie was sure he wouldn’t be able to contain his little fire if Eddie had. If he went to him and said _Oh, Rich, I have such a big crush on Marcie! Isn’t she so pretty?_ He’d fucking explode.

Which is why he throws up when Eddie tells him he’s going on a date with a girl from church. It hits him so hard in the gut that he has to excuse himself from lunch to heave into the toilet, pressing his fingers into the porcelain so hard that his knuckles creak and ache underneath his skin.

 _No no no no no._ Eddie doesn’t like girls. He has never liked girls, not for the entire time Richie has known him. Not even when they were little kids piled into Bill’s bed together, and Bill and Stan would giggle and whisper the names of girls in their class that they thought were really pretty. Eddie stayed quiet while Richie picked the names of girls that he thought he should probably like, and he’d reach over and hold Eddie’s little hand in his own while he lied.

Eddie follows him to the bathroom, of course, and Richie has to try his best to calm the frantic panic that’s layered itself on top of his skin. It doesn’t work quite as well as he hopes, though, and he’s still sucking in shaky breaths when he hears Eddie’s gentle footsteps stop right outside of the cubicle he’s having a meltdown in.

“Richie?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you okay?”

“Uh, yeah. Probably shouldn’t have eaten two sloppy joes. Pretty sure it’s not even beef. Like, I’m not saying I’ve ever tasted dog meat, but-”

“Rich.”

“Yes, Eddie my love?”

“Can you let me in? Please?”

Richie considers trying to get him to leave again, but he knows there’s not really a point. Eddie is incredibly stubborn when he wants to be, which is always. Especially when it comes to Richie, it seems.

So he reaches up and unlatches the lock, and he’s sure he looks pathetic folded up on the ground in front of the toilet like he is, but Eddie doesn’t look down at him with pity. He doesn’t even look concerned, which Richie is really surprised by. He looks understanding.

Richie’s jaw nearly drops when Eddie plops himself down onto the bathroom floor next to him, before brushing his hands off on his thighs with a grimace on his face.

“Are you okay lately? Something seems wrong.”

“Peach cobbler, Spaghetti man. Why do you ask?”

“You just seem… I donno. You seem upset? Or- no, not upset. Just. Quiet. Which you never are, so I know something is up.”

“Just got a lot on my mind, Eds. I know that’s hard to believe, but I do have important shit rattling around up here. It’s not all ass and titties.”

“Right. Well, if you want to talk, I’m always-”

“Speaking of titties,” Richie blurts out in interruption before he can shut himself the fuck up, “Got yourself a girlfriend, huh? Lucky you, Eds. You should ask if she has a friend with incredibly low standards so I can try and convince her to let me touch a boob before I’m 50.”

Eddie sighs and rolls his eyes, huffing out of his nose. “Yeah fucking right. Half of the girls at this school are drooling after you, you’re just too fucking dense to notice,” Eddie bites, crossing his arms over his chest. “And she isn’t my girlfriend. I’m just taking her to the movies to get my mom to leave me alone.”

Richie considers playing dumb and asking _leave you alone about what?_ but that would be disingenuous, and he knows that. He knows that Eddie knows that Richie knows that his mom thinks he’s gay. They’ve never really had a conversation about it, but Richie doesn’t think they need to.

“So… so when are you guys going?”

“On Friday. We’re gonna see _Much Ado About Nothing._ She’s a real theater nerd, I guess. And apparently the guy who plays Claudio is a first class heartthrob.”

“Right. Well, uh… have a good time, Eduardo. Use a condom, safe sex is great sex.”

The full body shudder and grimace that Eddie gives in return has Richie’s heart rate kicking up, and he rubs his sweaty palms against the thighs of his jeans.

“As fucking if. I do _not_ like her like that.”

“No? You said it’s that junior girl, right? Myra? She’s pretty.”

“She’s… okay. She’s annoying, more than anything. Maybe I’d think she’s pretty if she ever shut the fuck up.”

“I never shut the fuck up, and you still think I’m pretty,” Richie teases, fluttering his eyelashes in Eddie’s direction. He rolls his eyes but snorts out a little laugh, and the sound of it has Richie’s heart aching in his chest all over again.

“Believe it or not, I actually care about the things you have to say.”

“Seriously?”

“Yep, though I’ll deny having ever said that if you tell anybody. Really, I’m just trying to give you a little ego boost, since you seem like you need it.”

“Mission accomplished, fuck.”

The way Eddie is smiling at him almost allows him to forget that they’re sitting on a dirty bathroom floor and that his mouth is coated in sloppy joe vomit. Almost lets him forget that Eddie has a date with a girl on Friday, which makes him want to throw up all over again.

“Want me to walk you to the nurse?”

“Nah, I think I’m okay. Just had to get Fido up out the ol’ gullet. All good.”

“Right, but you desperately need to brush your teeth. I can smell your breath from here.”

“Not a fan of my chunky-meat-vomit-breath? You’re always bitching about me smelling like smoke, figured this would be an improvement.”

“Believe it or not, I’d happily take you smelling like an ashtray over regurgitated Derry High cafeteria food.”

Eddie does end up walking him to the nurse after all, to keep him company, he thinks. Because Eddie is so considerate and kind, and he’s the best fucking friend Richie has ever had and will ever have in his life, and he should quit while he’s ahead. Fuck.

“Um… so, I’ll see you later, right?”

“Of course, Right Said Ed. If I skip English again I’m pretty sure Mrs. Thompson won’t let me graduate.”

“No, I mean… I mean I’ll see you _later,_ right?” Eddie asks again in a whisper, biting gently on his bottom lip, not quite looking into Richie’s eyes. Which is a good thing, because he’s sure they look a little wilder than he should allow them to.

“Yeah, Eds. Of course.”

And that’s really the worst mistake he’s ever made, because Eddie’s mom walks in on them that night. Not that they’re doing anything incriminating, but for Eddie’s mom, two teenage boys lying in bed together is reason enough to threaten to call the police. Which she does, screeching over and over that she’ll call the cops if Richie doesn’t get out of her house _now, right now! Get out of my house and stay away from my son, you dirty little faggot!_

At the risk of sounding like a melodramatic teenager in a sitcom, it’s the worst day of Richie’s entire fucking life. And the entire time he’s running home, what he really wants to do is turn around and go back to Eddie’s house and scream at Sonia all of the things he’s wanted to say his entire life. That he’s not fucking sick, he’s not _dirty,_ he didn’t fucking do anything wrong. That there’s nothing fucking wrong with him, there’s fucking _not._ He wants to scream until his throat is hoarse. Wants to scream until her fucking ears bleed. Wants to shake her so hard that her neck snaps off of her shoulders.

But he keeps running toward his own house, and he tries to be quiet when he’s climbing back in through his own window, but he’s just so fucking upset and _angry_ and he isn’t paying attention to how clumsy he’s being, and of course he wakes up his mom, because why wouldn’t he. Why would he catch a fucking break ever once in his life?

“Rich, what’s going on? What’s all the noise?” she asks softly once she opens the door, gently rubbing sleep out of her eyes. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I- yeah, sorry, I fell.”

She blinks her eyes all the way open and takes in the open window and Richie’s fully dressed body and must put two-and-two together, because her face settles into a knowing expression.

“Rich, what’s up? Tell me what’s going on.”

“Nothing.”

“Baby.”

“Fucking nothing! Would you just drop it, please?”

Her face settles into a frown that punches Richie in the gut, and he flops down onto his bed with a sigh.

“Sorry, I’m just upset.”

“Do you want to tell me what’s going on?” she asks gently, shuffling over to seat herself on the edge of his bed.

“I just…” he considers lying, but he really doesn’t want to. Because it’s his mom, and of all the people he wants to lie to about who he is, his mom is not one of them. “I fucked up bad. Eddie’s mom caught me in his room.”

“Well…well were you-?”

“No! No, no. We were just lying in his bed! We’re not- it’s not like that. He’s- he’s dating some girl from school that goes to his church.”

“He is…?”

“Yep. They’re going to the movies on Friday because his mom wants him to, and now she thinks I’ve been sneaking in at night to turn him gay, so I’m pretty fucking sure she isn’t gonna let it go.”

Maggie rolls her eyes and pulls her robe tighter around her shoulders, crossing her arms over her chest. “That woman is a fucking cretin. I’d like to see her get what’s coming to her.”

“Me fucking too.”

“Have you… have you told Eddie? How you feel?”

“No, and I’m never going to.”

“Rich-”

“I can’t, mom. Things are bad enough as it is. I’m not gonna put a giant target on my back and Eddie’s too. Besides, I don’t think I could emotionally handle it at this point if I did tell him and he told me he hated me and never wanted to speak to me again. I think I’d snap.”

“He’s your best friend, Rich. I don’t think he’s capable of hating you.”

He isn’t so sure about that, but the next day at school, Eddie doesn’t avoid him. In fact, he tugs Richie underneath a stairwell as he’s sulking down the hallway.

“Richie, I’m so sorry,” is the first thing he says, and he’s reaching up to hold Richie by the shoulders, and he looks so serious. Richie considers playing dumb, or making a joke, or something, but he doesn’t.

“Not your fault. I’m sorry I got you in trouble.”

“You didn’t, I got myself into trouble,” Eddie sighs, bringing his hands down to rub at his temples.

“So what’s the damage? Locked away in your tower for a thousand years’ time?”

Eddie looks like he’s in physical pain when he looks back up at him, and his expression seizes Richie by the heart with its claws and squeezes.

“She nailed my window shut.”

“As expected, I’m sure. Is that it?”

“No, she also… also wants me to go on that date on Friday, still. And go to breakfast with Myra after church on Sunday. And take her to dinner next weekend.”

Richie’s breath seizes in his throat and he tries really, really fucking hard not to reach down and grab Eddie and squeeze him hard enough to crunch his bones between his arms.

Somehow he manages and rests a gentle hand on Eddie’s shoulder instead, and offers what he hopes is an equally as gentle and encouraging smile.

“Right. Well, she seems like a nice girl, Eds. You deserve it.”

“R-Right.”

Richie leaves school after that, because he’s pretty sure he’ll snap Myra’s fucking neck if he sees her. Not that that’s fair, because it isn’t. She didn’t do anything wrong.

But Jesus fucking Christ, Richie needs to calm down. And he really, really can’t. He can’t stop thinking about the way Sonia screamed at him like he was a fucking criminal, like he’d fucking _raped_ Eddie or something. All he fucking did was lie in his bed with him. He hadn’t even been touching him when Sonia had walked into the room.

He doesn’t stop walking until he ends up at the kissing bridge, where he often does, because he likes torturing himself. Likes reminding himself of how long he’s been keeping all of this shit inside, how long it’s been fucking poisoning him from the inside out. He feels like he’s losing his fucking mind.

He takes out his knife and carves over their initials like he does sometimes when he’s this close to fucking snapping like an elastic band. The letters are so deeply set into the wood at this point that they look almost black against the sun-bleached post, and he gouges them deeper, stabbing out splinters of wood with the tip of his knife until he’s satisfied that this mark will never fucking fade. That this town will never be able to forget them.

And that helps, until the next week at school, when Myra starts acting like she’s Eddie’s fucking girlfriend. They went on one fucking date. Alright, one and a half, if going out to breakfast with their parents after church counts, which Richie is pretty sure doesn’t fucking count at all. And yet she’s nearly fucking glued to his side, following him through the hallways like an annoying little puppy who won’t stop fucking yipping and yipping, until the horrible desire glances through your head to shut them up for good.

_Eddie-bear, sit with me at lunch? Eddie, dear, will you walk me to class? Oh, Eddie, you’re such a little sweetie!_

Ugh.

And it doesn’t stop. Richie holds out hope that maybe she’ll get the hint that Eddie is just being polite, and maybe she’ll notice the way he leans away from her touches and her hugs. He keeps hoping that she’ll get the fucking message and stop following Eddie around everywhere, yip yip yipping into his fucking ear all day, but she doesn’t.

Which means she’s also around Richie all day, but he puts up with it, because the only thing worse than having to listen to Myra’s fucking yapping and watch her drape herself all over Eddie would be knowing she’s doing it when Richie isn’t around to make sure she’s not trying anything worse.

He seems to be the only fucking one who isn’t okay with her following them down to the barrens, too, which he doesn’t fucking get. They all seem so fine with her trailing after them to their _secret clubhouse,_ like she’s a part of the fucking group. Like she has any fucking right to their special place. Richie knows he’s being childish, but Jesus fucking Christ, they’re barely there for 20 minutes before Richie is ready to strangle her to death and leave her down there to rot.

And she keeps fucking coming with them, even when it would otherwise just be him and Eddie. She attaches herself to his side like a giant, ugly, unnecessary limb and follows them underground, and Eddie never fucking says anything about it.

And Richie is trying really, really fucking hard not to be mad at Eddie. Because he knows Eddie is just doing what his mom asked him to, and that he’s being polite. He can tell in the subtle grimace on Eddie’s face every time Myra screeches _Eddie-bear_ just a little too loudly, and the way he throws glances in Richie’s direction when she’s not paying attention, like a silent plea to save him. _Save me, Richie. Get rid of her, please._

But he swallows it down and tolerates her presence, because he has no other choice. And he does a pretty good fucking job of it, until one day when all of them are down in the clubhouse, and she drapes herself across the hammock and tugs Eddie into it after her.

And that would be enough on its own to make Richie go fucking ballistic, but he really hits his critical point when Eddie very clearly tries to climb back out of the hammock, and she wraps her disgusting limbs around him like a spider and keeps him there.

And he really doesn’t think he could be any closer to combusting altogether when she fucking leans down and _kisses him,_ right on the fucking mouth, like they aren’t in a room full of fucking people. Like Eddie isn’t pulling away and trying to get her _the fuck away from him._

And she whispers, but Richie isn’t entirely unconvinced that he isn’t meant to fucking hear it when she says, “I wish we were alone, Eddie-bear, so I could just kiss you all over.”

Richie doesn’t realize that he’s been tensing all of his muscles until he stands up much too quickly and gets lightheaded, and the entire room is spinning, and he needs to get the fuck out of here.

“I gotta go home,” he announces, and he doesn’t mean for it to sound as desperate and uneasy as it does, but he barely registers the confused and concerned stares from his friends as he pushes the hatch open and starts climbing up to the surface, doing everything in his power to stop himself from climbing back down and dragging Myra out of that fucking hammock and tying her up and tossing her into the fucking Kenduskeag.

“Rich, wait!” Eddie calls after him, but he can’t, _he can’t,_ if he looks back down there at them, he’s going to do something terrible. He can’t.

“Bye, Richie,” Myra’s annoying fucking voice sing-songs up from the ground once he’s standing on the forest floor, and he grits his teeth so hard he’s afraid they’ll shatter before forcing himself to close the hatch as quietly as he can instead of slamming it off of its fucking hinges.

He’s hoping the walk back to his house will give him time to calm down, but it very much does not, and he ends up pacing around in the woods behind Myra’s house and trying to figure out which window leads to her bedroom.

He’s pretty sure it’s the one on the top left of the rear of the house, because there are these stupid fucking sun-catchers in it. She probably leaves her window unlocked, too, since her room is up on the second floor, and there isn’t a landing to get to her window. It wouldn’t be that hard to get up there once it’s dark outside, though; her dad probably has a ladder in their garage, and-

 _No no no no no no stop stop stop no stop no._ He can’t, he can’t.

He can’t, he can’t, but he still stands there and stares at her house and wonders if they have a burglar alarm until Myra’s mom pulls into their driveway, at which point he cuts through the woods behind her house and onto the street where he lives to force his feet back home.

 _So I could kiss you all over._ What the fuck does that mean? Does that mean that they’ve been fucking? Eddie’s been fucking her? Eddie’s been fucking taking her down to the clubhouse to fuck her when the rest of them aren’t around?

It’s not fucking fair. It’s not fucking fair. He was supposed to be Eddie’s first. They were supposed to be each other’s firsts. Not that it was ever a real fucking possibility in the first place. God, he’s such a fucking idiot. It’s not like he was ever going to gather the courage to confess. It’s not like if he had, Eddie would drop to his knees and beg him for it like Richie had foolishly allowed himself to fantasize about. It’s not like he’d say _Yes, Richie, I love you too! I love you so much, and I want you to be my first and my last and the only person for the rest of my life!_

That doesn’t make it any fucking easier to deal with the reality that Eddie has a fucking girlfriend now. That he’s been fucking. Some annoying fucking girl he barely knows and clearly doesn’t even fucking like all that much. And he’s probably been fucking her to convince himself he’s not gay.

Because he’s fucking gay. He has to be. He’s never ever not once _ever_ mentioned liking girls before.

Maybe this is the worst fucking day of Richie’s life. They all just seem to keep getting fucking worse.

And it’s not like he can comfort himself with the thought of curling up in Eddie’s bed later and sleeping next to him and pretending that all of this isn’t fucking happening. He doesn’t even get that privilege anymore.

He can’t fucking calm down. He considers walking to the kissing bridge, but he’s pretty sure if he carves over their initials any deeper, he’ll go straight through to the other side of the post. So he lies in his bed and runs the tips of his fingers over the knife instead, and thinks about how much force it would really take to break the skin. To cut someone deep enough to really hurt them. Wonders if Myra’s parents are the type to stay up very late at night.

He doesn’t mean to. He’s never cut himself on purpose. Not really, not in the way that he thinks most people do. Mostly he found himself curious when he was younger, when he’d been at the peak of his frenzy and had run out of surfaces to carve his devotion into, and considered turning to his own. He’d cut into his leg once, just deep enough to bleed. And he’d never done it again. It scared him how lightheaded it made him to stare at the blood.

So he really doesn’t mean to press into the blade hard enough to spill blood over his fingertips, but something in him goes slow and warm as he stares at it dripping down into his palm. And maybe this is what he deserves, for being so sick.

He feels like he’s in a trance as he undoes his pants to pull them down with his bleeding fingers, and he almost has the mind to be alarmed by how hard he is as he switches which hand is holding the knife so that he can pull out his cock. But he’s just fucking mad. That’s what it is. He’s mad and this is fucking bullshit and he just needs to get some kind of fucking release.

He thinks about if Myra bled when Eddie took her virginity. Some girls do. Some girls bleed a lot, but he’s always wondered if that has more to do with boys being too rough with them than their cherry popping. His dad always told him that it’s not supposed to hurt when girls lose their virginities; that sex isn’t supposed to hurt a girl at all. He said if he was hurting a girl that he should stop, because he’s doing something wrong.

But everyone thinks it’s supposed to hurt. Especially girls. He hears them talk about it all the time, about how getting railed for the first time felt like getting split open with a coke bottle, and how they bled so much after, like they’re bragging about it.

He wonders if Eddie hurt her. If he had the patience and the self-control not to. He wonders what it would feel like to hurt someone like that. If it would feel good. How it would feel to hurt Eddie like that.

His lap is a bloody mess by the time he comes back to himself, and at first he thinks maybe all the blood is still coming from his fingers as he’s stroking his cock, but then he realizes he hurts. And he’s pressing the edge of the blade into his leg with his other hand, and it’s oozing blood all over his thigh and onto his groin.

He swipes his fingers through it before stroking over his cock even faster, and he can’t stop staring at it. Can’t stop thinking about Eddie, and his soft skin, and how fucking mad he is at him right now.

He feels weird about it afterwards, as he’s rinsing blood and cum off of his skin in the shower. Even weirder when he gently runs his fingers over the jagged, hasty _R+E_ carved into the meat of his thigh that he doesn’t entirely remember putting there. But he figures this is probably just what it feels like when you finally lose your mind. Like a screaming under your skin that never goes away while everything else around you has the fucking nerve to be silent.

He’s going to write her a note. He’ll write her a note and leave it in her locker, asking her to meet him down in the clubhouse after school. So they can finally be _alone_ like she so desperately wants to be. He’s not very good at faking Eddie’s handwriting, but she’ll want to believe it’s from him. People are very easily convinced when they want to believe something to be true.

Eddie asks if he’s okay at school the next day, and Richie is surprised by how cheerful he sounds when he says yes. How normal. Like he isn’t even trying. _Peach cobbler, Eds! Never better._ Maybe he doesn’t have to anymore.

It’s easy to find a moment to sneak to Myra’s locker, because she spends every fucking moment between classes sewn into Eddie’s side like a rotting, rejected transplant. Nobody pays attention to him as he slips the folded up piece of paper between the slats in her locker. Nobody notices fucking anything. People don’t want to notice things, Richie has realized. People like to pretend that they’re blind in one eye. Especially in this fucking town.

He’s just going to talk to her and tell her the truth, since Eddie won’t. If Eddie doesn’t have the fucking balls to tell her he’s not into her, then Richie will do it. And Eddie might hate him for it after, but Richie has a feeling he’ll be thankful. He’s been begging with his eyes. _Get rid of her, Richie, please._

He will. He will. He’ll get rid of her, and tell her to fuck off, and tell her that she’s better off with someone else. And then Richie can figure out another way to sneak into Eddie’s room at night, and everything can go back to the way it was before Myra fucking ruined Richie’s entire life.

He’s surprisingly calm as he waits for her, idly picking at his cuticles and wondering if she’ll immediately try to run away once she realizes that Eddie isn’t there. He hopes not. But he’s pretty good at charming people, so he’s sure he’ll be able to convince her to stay. Even if he’s pretty sure she hates him.

By the time the hatch starts to open, Richie is fairly confident this whole thing might go relatively well. He even manages to keep the scowl off of his face when her annoying, grating voice precedes her as she climbs down the ladder and onto the dirt floor.

“I almost couldn’t find the door on my own, sweetheart. I don’t know why you wouldn’t just wait for me after school! Is it because you didn’t want your friends to know we were coming here alone? That’s so romantic, Eddie,” she’s babbling as she gracelessly wobbles on the ladder and onto the floor, and the bright smile on her face falls as soon as her eyes fall to Richie, where he’s seated in the hammock, trying his best to unclench his fists.

“What are _you_ doing here?”

“In the hangout spot _my_ friend built years ago, before Eddie even knew your fucking name? Just fucking chilling, what about you?” Richie snaps at her before he can reign in his anger, and her eyes narrow at him with a sneer.

“Eddie asked me to meet him here. Alone. Meaning that you’re not supposed to be here.”

Richie has to dig his fingers into his thigh to stop himself from snapping back at her a second time, because he can’t risk her getting pissed off and leaving. So he pushes down into the meat of his leg, right over the healing letters in his skin, and that helps. That’s grounding.

“Look, Myra. I think we should have a talk.”

“What could you and I _possibly_ have to talk about?” she asks with that same sneer still on her face, crossing her arms defensively over her chest.

Richie takes a breath before standing from the hammock and making his way over to her, ducking underneath the supports in the ceiling that he’s gotten too tall for over the years.

“I don’t want to hurt your feelings, okay? That’s not- that’s not what I’m trying to do. I want you to know that,” he begins gently, and she raises a skeptical blonde eyebrow at him, but stays quiet. Shockingly.

Richie takes a deep breath, and he tries to say this as gently as he can, because he knows it’s gonna hurt her feelings. Which he gets. He’s been rejected by Eddie his entire life and he can vouch firsthand for the fact that it is not a good feeling.

“Eddie isn’t…. Eddie doesn’t like you like that, Myra. He’s not that into you. He told me the other day that he just asked you out because his mom told him to.”

Anger creeps onto her face as she takes in his words and she balls her fists at her sides, and okay, maybe he could have been a little more delicate.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. Eddie wouldn’t say that.”

“He did. He told me before you guys even went out that he was only going to the movies with you because-”

“Ugh, just shut up! He probably only said that to get you off of his case, you weirdo!”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re _weird._ You’re in Eddie’s business all the time.”

“He’s my _best friend.”_

“You’re just jealous.”

“Trust me, Myra, you’re not my type.”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

Richie goes silent and stares her down, and she stares back just as unrelenting, and Richie wants to tell her to quit while she’s ahead. Just stop talking. Don’t open her mouth again unless she never wants to speak another word. But he doesn’t quite get the words out in time.

“I still don’t understand what he sees in you. He talks about you like you hung the stars in the sky, but all I see is a lowlife degenerate with no future, and a faggot, to-boot.”

All of the muscles in Richie’s body tense up at that word, and he has to close his eyes for a moment, because if he keeps looking at her, he might burn her alive.

“Shut up, Myra.”

“What did you think was going to happen? That you were going to scare me off so you could live out your little fantasy of having Eddie to yourself? As if. You’re pathetic. You’re pathetic for even thinking Eddie could be a disgusting faggot like you, let alone let someone like you anywhere _near_ him. Everyone knows you’re trash, Trashmouth. Eddie only stays friends with you because he feels _bad_ for you, because you have _nothing_ going for you.”

He’s getting that feeling again, that _shut up shut up shut up_ feeling that makes his body snap into something like fight or flight, but not quite, because it’s something predatory that makes him afraid of what he’s going to do. How his body is going to react without his permission.

“Myra, shut the fuck up, now. You don’t want to play this game with me.”

“You don’t scare me, Richie. You’re not going to intimidate me into staying silent and going away so you can live out whatever sick, faggy fantasies you have about Eddie. You’re sick, Tozier. Get help. Eddie shouldn’t even be around you, you’ll probably try to- to do something _awful_ to him. You’re _sick.”_

He isn’t going to hurt her, he really isn’t. He just wants her to shut the _fuck up,_ and his body snaps forward to clamp a hand over her mouth before he can talk himself out of doing it. Not that he would. Who is he kidding? She’s lucky he’s only covering her mouth, instead of strangling her where she fucking stands, until her face goes purple and he can see every vein in her eyeballs burst.

She looks scared, and he thought he’d be more bothered by that than he is. But he’s not really bothered by it at all.

“Shut your fucking mouth, you dumb bitch.”

She’s blinking her frightened little blue eyes up at him, and she’s trying to struggle out of his grip, and she can’t. She can’t run away. Or maybe she isn’t really trying yet. Maybe her adrenaline hasn’t kicked in all the way.

It definitely hasn’t, because he sees when it does. Her eyes dilate all at once and she bites down on a chunk of the flesh on Richie’s palm, so hard that he feels his skin split to spill blood into her mouth.

“Cunt!”

He pushes her away from him and sends her tumbling to the ground, coughing Richie’s blood out of her mouth.

“You fucking _freak!_ You psychopath, what is wrong with you!” she’s screeching, she’s screaming so fucking loud and there shouldn’t be anyone around but there might be and she needs to shut up right fucking now.

“Myra.”

“I’m going straight to the fucking police and telling them you assaulted me, you maniac! What is _wrong_ with you?” she screeches again, wiping Richie’s blood off of her chin before her eyes go wide in panic. “Oh, _God,_ do you have AIDS? Did you infect me with your faggot disease _on purpose?”_

“Myra! Shut the fuck up!” He finally screams, and she screams back, incoherent and screeching and unrelenting and Jesus fucking Christ, someone is going to fucking hear her.

“Myra!”

But she’s not listening, and he’s panicking, and he doesn’t know what the fuck to do. So he drops to the ground where she’s still screaming, and she tries to scramble away from him, and he grabs her by the ankles to stop her before she can go too far.

“Get the fuck off of me! Get away!”

She just starts screaming louder, and it’s fucking hurting his ears, and he knows he can’t cover her mouth again, because she’ll just bite a chunk of flesh out of his palm this time. So he climbs on top of her to straddle her waist before reaching to take his belt off, because he can gag her with that, and then they probably have something in here he can tie her up with-

“Oh God, oh _God, no,_ no, don’t, _please!”_

The sudden pleading takes him off-guard and he pauses, and she starts sobbing, and he can hear what must be blood in the back of her throat from her screams.

“Please, please don’t, don’t do this to me,” she’s crying, and she’s pathetically trying to push him away, but she must be crashing from the adrenaline, because her punches are incredibly weak.

And then Richie realizes that she thinks he’s going to rape her, and the full body revulsion he feels at the thought of it sends a disgusted shiver ripping through him.

“I’m- I’m not!”

“I’m gonna tell everyone! I’ll tell everyone what you did to me, you disgusting _freak_! You _psycho fag_!”

She must get a second wind of adrenaline because she starts struggling again, and she’s dangerously close to throwing Richie off balance with the way she’s tossing her weight around and punching at his chest, and he decides he has to use the belt to tie her hands up instead, because he doesn’t have anything else within reach.

He snatches her wrists as she goes to beat her fists against his chest again and wrestles them down to her stomach, holding them with one hand and leaning his full weight into her abdomen as he finishes taking his belt off with his other. He hears the breath leave her lungs all at once and she’s gasping for air, and there’s a blissful moment of silence as he gets the belt around her wrists and pulls it tight, securing it as firmly as he can as she cries and struggles.

And now he well and truly doesn’t know what the fuck to do. He can’t let her go, she said she’ll go to the cops. Not that he’s confident they’ll actually do anything in this backwards-ass town, but Butch Bowers has a problem with Richie and Eddie in particular, along with Stan and Mike, because… well, isn’t that obvious?

He could threaten her. Just try to scare her badly enough that she doesn’t say anything. Lie and say his dad has connections and that the cops won’t do anything if she narks. It wouldn’t be totally unbelievable, everyone already thinks his family is way more loaded than they are, and he could use that to his advantage, this one time.

Yeah, that’s what he’ll do.

She’s still gasping for breath as he pulls his knife out of his pocket and flicks it open, making a show of it as he holds it up to her neck, right against where her pulse is rapidly beating against her skin. Her eyes are frantic and her face is paper white, and she turns her head to vomit onto the dirt floor underneath her as Richie leans down to whisper into her ear.

“If you fucking tell anyone about this, I’ll cut your fucking throat open, do you understand? You know who my father is, right? Practically the mayor’s best bud? Do you really think fucking anything is going to happen if you go to the cops, Myra? Because all you’ll do is piss me off and get your fucking throat slit.”

She spends a pathetic moment gasping in air and swallowing around her sobs before she speaks, and when she does, Richie almost sort of respects her resolve. Almost, if she weren’t so fucking stupid for choosing right now to be an unrelenting cunt.

“I’ll tell _everyone,_ I’ll tell everybody you’re a dirty faggot and that you raped me! I’ll tell everyone you’re a pathetic, psychotic freak,” she spits, and her breath smells like bile, and it makes Richie’s stomach churn. “I bet you’ve tried to do the same thing to Eddie, haven’t you? You monster. Eddie could never fucking love you, you know that, don’t you? He’d _never._ Nobody will ever love you. You’re gonna die alone, and Eddie will be happy with me, because he’s not a psycho fag like you.”

All of it, everything all at once snaps shut inside of him like a rat trap and he doesn’t mean to, _fuck he doesn’t mean to but he does._

There’s so much blood, and he didn’t think it would be so dark. He didn’t think it would come out so fast, either, but every little gurgle she makes sends more burgundy oozing out of her neck, and it’s pooling up so fast underneath her as she looks up at Richie with her frantic blue eyes.

She looks terrified. She looks like a meat rabbit that knows it’s going to die when you take it out of its hutch. He can smell her piss herself, and the stench of it mixes with the iron of her blood in the air around them to create the smell of fresh death, before decay and rot touches it.

She stops looking so scared, at some point. Maybe it’s because her brain is finally releasing the feel-good chemicals it does when you die, and she’s too high to understand what’s happening anymore. Maybe she’s just accepted that she’s going to die. Either way, her eyes go less frantic, but she still has them trained on Richie’s, and he can’t stop staring back.

And she uses her last bit of dying energy to scream at him with those eyes, just like Eddie’s mom does every single fucking time he sees her. Just like she screamed with her stupid bitch mouth as she chased him out of her house.

_Faggot. Dirty faggot. Freak._

_Stay away from him._

_He’d never love you._

Dumb fucking cunt. Dumb fucking bitch who can’t shut the fuck up even as she’s bleeding out on the fucking floor underneath him.

And he’s not really sure why that’s what makes him break entirely. He’s not sure why watching the spiteful life leave her eyes is what gets under his skin so deeply that he doesn’t think he’ll ever come back from this feeling this time.

But before he knows it, he can’t stop. He can’t stop. He plunges the knife into her neck a second time, then a third, then her chest, then through her stupid fucking mouth, splitting her lips open and sending her still blood trickling back into her deadened throat that will never speak another word again.

He considers giving her a mark to match the one on his thigh; he considers giving her a fucking thousand of them, all over her body, so that she’ll know. She’ll know that Eddie is his, and has always been his, and she can wear that indisputable fact on her dead skin until her flesh rots off of her corpse.

No, no. That’s stupid. That would be stupid, and he’d never be able to tell the cops that he didn’t kill her if his initials are carved all over her body. So he manages to stop himself from doing that, at least.

But those fucking eyes. Those dead blue eyes are still fucking mocking him, and he wishes he could stare into them long enough to bring her back to life so he could fucking kill her all over again.

But he doesn’t think he has that sort of power, so he settles for prying them out of her head with the tip of his knife, and that’s what he’s engrossed in doing when the hatch to the clubhouse starts to open above him. Truthfully, he’s so focused on cutting away at her optical nerves that he doesn’t realize someone is coming down the ladder until he hears the distinct sound of the hatch door slamming shut, and he finally stops just as he gets her second eye back into its socket, turned the wrong way around so it’s staring into her silent brain.

“Richie?” Eddie already sounds terrified, and Richie wonders if it’s the smell he notices first. The smell of blood that’s sticking to everything in the room. Or maybe he’s already able to see Richie where he’s still hunched over Myra’s dead body, covered in her blood from the elbows down and splattered with it everywhere else. Or maybe he can hear Richie’s ragged breathing, because it’s certainly all he can hear.

“R-Rich…”

Eddie’s trembling voice finally breaks him out of whatever trance he’s in and he climbs off of Myra’s mangled body, but he’s pretty sure it’s still obvious that it’s her. Her hair is red from the blood and her face is kind of a mess, but everything else about her is still recognizable enough that Richie is sure Eddie must know it’s her as he stands frozen a few feet away, trembling so badly that Richie can see his body wracking and his knees knocking together.

And then he tears his gaze away from Myra’s dead body and looks up at Richie, and his eyes are wide as dinner plates, and Richie thinks he’s having a panic attack.

“Eddie, hey, it’s not- I didn’t-”

He cuts himself off, because there’s not really anything he can say that would be believable. _I didn’t kill her. I didn’t cut her eyes out. I didn’t stab her over and over and over even after I knew she was dead._

Eddie is going to vomit, he’s sure. He looks sweaty, at least. And he’s staring at Richie with those wide eyes, staring at the blood all over his hands and his arms and his clothes.

“She had an accident.”

And Eddie shakes his head, and he takes his trembling little hand away from his mouth to speak again.

“You- You- Richie, you killed her.”

He’s not sure if it’s the look in Eddie’s eyes, or the tremor in his voice, or the acknowledgement of what Richie has done that snaps him into motion, but before he knows it, he’s crowding into Eddie’s space, meeting him step for step as he backs away until he’s pressed to the wall.

And Eddie looks so terrified, so fucking _scared of him_ and he’s never looked at Richie like this before and it’s gnashing at his heart so horribly that he starts getting frantic all over again, reaching up to pet over Eddie’s cheek before remembering that he’s covered in blood and proceeds only to smear Myra’s gore all over the side of his face.

“Eddie, baby, hey listen, please! I didn’t- I- it was her fault! She came at me, she surprised me. I wasn’t expecting it, she just- just came up behind me and I reacted on instinct,” he tries, but Eddie’s expression doesn’t relax in the least, and he’s pretty sure Eddie is going to piss himself. He’s terrifying him. Eddie is terrified of him.

So maybe he should be honest.

“I- She- I did it for _you,_ Eddie, she was a fucking cunt. She was a horrible fucking person! I know you didn’t like her, Eddie, I know you didn’t. I know she was pressuring you, I _know_ she was. I just wanted to help, I just wanted to help you!”

Eddie starts crying silent tears, and some of them cut through the blood already drying on his cheek, and Richie decides he’ll just have to kill them both too, which is fine. It’s not like he’d get away with killing Myra, anyway. So that’s fine. That’s fine.

“Eddie, baby, I love you so much, you know that, right? I know I never told you. I never told you and I’m sorry, but you know, don’t you? You’ve known, you always knew, right? You know I love you more than anything in the fucking world, you know I’d fucking die for you. You know I’d do anything for you, don’t you? You know I can’t live without you, Eddie; I love you so much it makes me feel sick inside,” he’s hysterical by the end of it, and he’s crying, and he brings the still-bloody knife up to Eddie’s neck to press against his pulse, and he’s trying to convince himself to do it.

Just stab him like he did to Myra. But he can’t, because he fucking loves Eddie, and Eddie is panting, and why isn’t he screaming yet? He hasn’t screamed once, and he’s so red in the face, and his pupils are so big as he’s staring up into Richie’s eyes.

Eddie brings his trembling hands down to his crotch, and Richie is sure that it’s because he really has pissed himself, finally. Not that he could blame him.

But he just holds them there, and Richie’s breath gets heavy in his lungs.

“Eddie…”

“You- You killed her, Richie,” Eddie repeats, but it comes out soft and breathless, and Richie doesn’t understand what the fuck is going on, and he still has the knife pressed to Eddie’s neck. Eddie looks up at him all wide-eyed and breathless, and his hands are still covering his crotch.

“Are you gonna kill me, too?”

He sounds so terrified, but he’s biting the inside of his cheek, and Richie doesn’t understand _what the fuck is going on._

He grabs Eddie’s wrist and pins one of his arms to the wall behind him, and Eddie gasps, staring at Richie’s bloodied hand where it’s smearing red across his own skin. Until Richie reaches down with the hand that’s holding the knife, and Eddie watches as Richie wrestles his other hand away and reaches for his shorts, all the while squirming against the wall behind him.

He’s hard. Eddie is fully fucking hard in his shorts and Richie squeezes around his shaft with the knife still in his hand, and Eddie lets out a sobbing cry as more tears stream down his face and drag Myra’s blood with them.

“Eddie, are you- why are you- what the fuck?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know.”

Richie can’t stop staring at his face, and how he’s fucking _blushing,_ and he’s still so fucking hard in Richie’s hand, and Richie is fucking _mad._

“How fucking long?”

“What?”

“How long have you wanted to fuck me, Eddie?”

Eddie’s eyes go frantic and he tries to pull his wrist out of Richie’s grip, but he squeezes harder, and more tears spill over onto Eddie’s cheeks.

“R-Richie, you’re scaring me.”

“How fucking long, Eds? Tell me, now.”

Eddie tries to push him away with his free arm, but it’s a weak attempt, and Richie lets go of Eddie’s cock to pin his other wrist against the wall in such a way that the knife is just slicing into the flesh of Eddie’s palm, and he gasps at the sensation.

“Don’t make me ask you again.”

“A- A long time,” Eddie admits in a squeak, and Richie feels a horrible rage explode inside of him that makes his head fucking hurt. He tightens his grip on Eddie’s wrists until he can feel his bones grinding together, and Eddie cries out in pain.

“How fucking long is a long time?”

“I- I don’t know! Forever! I guess- I guess forever,” Eddie admits in a frantic sniffle, and Richie isn’t sure if he wants to fucking kill him or bite his lips bloody.

“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me? You must have known how I felt about you this entire time! It’s not like I ever fucking hid it!”

“I didn’t hide it either! I let you sleep in my fucking bed for years! I wouldn’t exactly call that subtle!”

“But I was the one climbing in your fucking window every night. I was the one making the fucking effort. I was the one sitting here fucking dying inside while you traipsed around with your little fucking girlfriend. You think that’s fair, Eddie? You think it’s fair that you hid this from me for so long?”

“I-I didn’t- I wasn’t sure that you-”

“That’s fucking bullshit and you know it, so don’t.”

Eddie closes his eyes, pressing his head against the wall as more tears leak down his cheeks.

“I was scared.”

“Scared of what?”

“Of everything! Of this- this fucking _town,_ of people like- like her,” Eddie admits with a cry, glancing back over at Myra’s corpse. His eyes go wide again and he shifts his legs, and Richie watches the movement in rapture.

“You’re a sick little puppy, aren’t you?”

“Richie,” Eddie sobs miserably, and Richie presses his thigh between Eddie’s legs, probably too hard. Definitely hard enough to be painful, but Eddie’s jaw drops open and he whines in the back of his throat, dropping his hips down to rub himself against Richie’s leg.

“God, you’re fucking disgusting,” Richie bites, and Eddie’s breath catches, and he’s squirming so badly that Richie might think he’s struggling, if he didn’t know any better.

“I’m sorry,” Eddie sobs out, and Richie bares his teeth down at the smaller boy. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

Richie pulls away to grab Eddie by the hair on the top of his head, using his grip to toss him down onto the dirt floor. Eddie lets out a shriek as he goes tumbling to the ground, and Richie is on him immediately, straddling his hips and pressing his knife to Eddie’s throat once more.

“I could kill you, you know. I’m so fucking mad at you, Eddie, I could fucking kill us both right now.”

“I was _scared,_ Richie!”

“You don’t think I was fucking scared too? You don’t think I spent my entire fucking _life_ being afraid, and you fucking pushed me away instead of letting us be scared _together,_ at the very fucking least? And now- now I fucking _killed someone for you,_ Eddie! You realize that, don’t you?”

“Yes! I’m- I’m sorry, Richie, I’m sorry,” Eddie is sobbing so much that his words are breaking apart. “I’m sorry I never told you how I felt.”

“Then tell me now.”

“What?”

“Tell me all the shit you should have fucking told me all these years.”

Eddie blinks up at him before sniffling in a breath. “I- I’ve thought about what it would be like to- to kiss you ever since we were little kids. I used to think about it whenever you rode me double on your bike, I thought about kissing you when you dropped me off at my house.”

Richie grabs Eddie by the chin and pulls his mouth open with his bloodied fingers, causing the smaller boy to let out an indeterminate squeak before Richie licks into his mouth, as deep as he can manage to before their teeth are mashed together.

It tastes like blood, Myra’s blood, but it also tastes like what he’d always imagined Eddie would taste like; like vanilla lip balm and candies that he wasn’t supposed to eat. The taste quickly becomes the only thing Richie wants to taste ever again, and he presses his tongue so far into Eddie’s mouth that the other boy coughs, and Richie pulls away to leave Eddie a drooling mess underneath him.

“Now you know. What else?” he pants, and Eddie speaks between panting breaths.

“I- I think about you when I touch myself,” he manages to get out quietly, and his words punch through Richie’s gut, and he realizes for the first time how hard he is in his jeans.

“Come on, baby. You know what I want to hear.”

“Richie!”

“Eddie, I fucking _killed_ someone for you, and you can’t even tell me about your sick little fantasies? You don’t think I’ve fucking earned that?”

Eddie hesitates, biting on his lip, and Richie grabs him by the chin and turns his face towards Myra’s dead body, where it’s finally stopped leaking blood onto the floor.

“Myra. I killed her for _you,_ you ungrateful bitch. I think I deserve to hear just how badly you’ve wanted me your whole fucking life, since she lost hers because of you,” he growls, and Eddie tries to turn away from the carnage, but Richie presses his face harder into the dirt and doesn’t allow him to. “As a matter of fact, why don’t you tell _her_ how badly you’ve wanted me. I think she needs to hear it more than I do.”

“Richie-”

“Tell her.”

Eddie starts sobbing so badly underneath Richie that his entire body is wracking with each one. “I- Sometimes, when I went to your house, I would-”

“Are you talking to me, baby? You should address the person you’re speaking to. You’re being impolite.”

Eddie lets out a high-pitched whine at the back of his throat before trying again, and Richie starts to cut Eddie’s shirt off of him once he starts speaking again, not being at all careful not to slice into Eddie’s skin as he does it.

“W-When I would go to Richie’s house, sometimes I would- while he was sleeping or in the bathroom, I would take my pants off and rub myself against his things. His pillows and his stuffed animals and his mattress, and- and then I’d go home and touch myself,” Eddie admits through his tears, and by the time he’s finished speaking, Richie has his shirt all the way off and in tatters beside them.

“You can do better than that, baby,” Richie goads, but he’s burning inside, and he ducks his head down to lap at the blood seeping from the cuts he’s left on Eddie’s chest, earning him choked little cries that have him throbbing in his jeans.

“I would steal clothes from your- from Richie’s laundry whenever I could, and I’d put them in my backpack and take them home and wear them while I jerked off. I would- I would steal his dirty underwear and wear them while I touched myself, and then I’d wash them and put them back the next time I went over to his house.”

“So that’s why you never fucking said anything about the shit I left at your house. I guess those must have been like gifts, huh?” Richie moves up to mumble into his ear, pressing his blood-covered lips to Eddie’s neck before biting down, hard enough that Eddie cries out at the sensation. “I didn’t tell you to stop.”

Eddie lets out a pathetic sob, trying again to turn his face away from Myra’s corpse, but Richie’s grip is unrelenting.

“I- I don’t have anything else to tell.”

“Bullshit.”

“I don’t!”

“Don’t you think you’ve fucking lied to me enough, Eddie?”

“I- I used to put your toothbrush in my mouth sometimes.”

“I’ve been doing that since fifth grade, Eds. Come on.”

Eddie nearly screams, beating his fists against the dirty floor before letting out a defeated sigh.

“I touch you in your sleep,” Eddie nearly whispers, and Richie forgets to be mad about Eddie forgetting to address Myra because his brain short-circuits.

“What?”

“I- Fuck,” Eddie lets out a few sobs to get his crying under control before speaking again, and Richie can’t help grinding his cock down into the meat of Eddie’s thigh, because he feels like he’s going to fucking explode. “Sometimes when Richie is asleep in my bed, I… I unbutton his pants really carefully and I take his cock out. And I’ll- I’ll touch him until he’s hard, and then I’ll go jerk off in my bathroom and think about how big his cock is,” Eddie finally gets out, and Richie doesn’t realize that the rumbling, growling sound he hears is coming from his own chest until he speaks.

“God, Eddie, that’s so fucking fucked up. You’re fucking sick,” Richie praises, taking his hand off of Eddie’s face to start tugging down his shorts. Eddie keeps his face turned towards Myra all on his own. “Did you ever make me come?”

Eddie shakes his head against the dirt, sniffling in another wet breath. “N-No, I was too scared. But I did- I did… um. Put it in my mouth. Once.”

“What the fuck, baby. When?”

“A-A few weeks ago.”

“Did you like it?”

Eddie immediately starts nodding his head, and Richie rips his shorts and briefs down his legs, leaving him fully exposed on the ground underneath him.

“I wanted to keep going, but you started making noise in your sleep, and I was afraid you would wake up. I wanted to make you come in my mouth.”

Richie frantically undoes his pants and takes his cock out, because it feels like it’s going to fucking fall off if he doesn’t relieve some of the fucking tension that feels like it’s been building up to this moment for his entire fucking life.

“You will, baby, I promise. I’ll let you suck my cock next time, okay? I’ll even pretend to be asleep, if that gets your freaky little rocks off,” Richie teases, and Eddie sobs miserably, bringing his hands up to drag them down his face as Richie moves down to take Eddie’s cock into his mouth.

He’s never done this before, obviously. He’s never done fucking anything with anyone, aside from kissing, because it felt fucking disgusting to do it with anyone other than Eddie. But the desperate little cry that Eddie gives and the way his hands fly down to Richie’s hair are encouragement enough for him to keep going.

But Eddie doesn’t keep going, so Richie pulls off for a moment to press his knife into the meat of Eddie’s thigh, just hard enough to draw blood and make him gasp. “You’re terribly quiet up there, sweetheart. I know you have some other awful little secret to tell Myra, don’t you?”

“N-No.”

He presses the knife in harder, and Eddie cries out, and his cock jumps in front of Richie’s face.

“Don’t you dare lie to me again.”

“I can’t!”

“I think Myra deserves to know, Eddie. I think she deserves to know how you were too busy thinking about me to even fucking consider her.”

“Richie, I can’t- I can’t tell you this one! You’ll hate me, you’ll think I’m-”

“That you’re what, Eds? Fucked up? Insane? Sick? Because I already know you’re all of those things, and I’ve never been more fucking in love with you than I am right now,” Richie assures him, giving him a soft kiss on his belly and dragging his knife down to leave a long slice along Eddie’s thigh before taking his cock back into his mouth.

Eddie nearly screams, and the thud from his head banging against the dirt floor is almost concerning. Richie takes Eddie’s cock deeper into his mouth until he’s nearly pressing into his throat, and Eddie’s hands fly down to Richie’s hair once more as he lets out these pretty little sobbing moans that Richie wants to listen to for the rest of his life. He will.

“I- I’m so ashamed of myself,” Eddie cries before he even admits to what he’s done, and Richie is burning with anticipation, stroking his cock in his bloody fist as he waits for Eddie to continue.

“I- I started fingering myself while I thought about Richie fucking me, and I just- it started not being enough, and I started- started putting things inside of me. Just- anything. Markers, and- and toothbrushes, sometimes, and- fuck,” Eddie cuts himself off with a cry as Richie moans around him, and Eddie’s fingers tighten to the point of pain in his curls. “And I- I knew my mom had… had _things._ I found them in her closet once when I was little, and- and I knew she had _big ones,_ and I just-”

Eddie lets out another choked sob, and Richie is pretty fucking sure he’s going to come into his fist already, for fuck’s sake.

“I just get so _horny_ sometimes, and it won’t go away, and I just needed something- something bigger, something that would make it easier to imagine that it was Richie fucking me instead. So I- I sneak into her room sometimes when she’s not home, and I steal the biggest one of… _them_ from her closet, and I’ll put it on the floor in the bathroom and ride it and think about Richie, about how much better it would be if it was Richie inside of me, and I think about Richie… about Richie creaming my ass, and I always come so hard that it makes me feel dizzy,” Eddie finishes, and he’s panting by the end of it, and he’s nearly fucking into Richie’s face.

“And I don’t ever think about you,” Eddie tells the dead body, and she obviously doesn’t respond, and Richie can feel Eddie ripping strands of his hair out as he presses his hips up into Richie’s face. “I never think about you, and I come so fucking hard, and I don’t fucking wash it before I put it back in my mom’s closet.”

Eddie comes all over the inside of Richie’s mouth, and he has to stop touching himself before he comes too, because he is going to fuck Eddie right now. He’s waited long enough, for fuck’s sake.

He doesn’t swallow Eddie’s cum and lets some of it drip down his chin before pressing their lips together again and wetting Eddie’s mouth with himself, rubbing Eddie’s cum between their tongues and all over his teeth so that he can taste how fucking sick he is, how fucking sick and fucked up and depraved, just like Richie, just like he let Richie be for so long, believing he was the only one.

Eddie is crying into his mouth and pulling him in harder by the hair, so hard that it fucking hurts, and Richie wants to rip Eddie’s fucking skin open and climb inside of him. Wants to climb down his throat and make a home inside of his body.

Eddie bites him, that little fucker. Bites him hard enough on the lip to draw blood with his sharp little teeth, and then cries into Richie’s mouth before licking it away with his tongue, rubbing Richie’s blood between their lips as he clings onto him for dear life.

Richie has to physically push him away to get Eddie to let go, and even then, he drags his nails along Richie’s arms, catching his skin underneath his nails and leaving stinging trails in their wake.

“No, no, please,” Eddie begs him desperately, and Richie is sure that he won’t ever hear a sweeter sound in his life than that.

“Just give me a second, Jesus. You’re pretty fucking impatient for someone who waited a fucking decade to tell me how you fucking feel,” Richie scolds, standing to rummage around in one of the bookshelves until he finds what he’s looking for.

“I’m sorry, Richie, I’m sorry,” Eddie cries desperately, and Richie quiets him with another kiss before pushing his thighs open, and Eddie lets out an ‘oof’ as Richie pushes him back down onto the ground.

“I’m gonna fuck you now, like you always wanted. I’m gonna fucking split you open,” Richie promises, uncapping the bottle of lube that he grabbed from the bookshelf to squirt some onto his hand, wetting the blood there and turning the lube red as he rubs it between his fingers.

“Where-where did you get that?”

“It’s Stan’s, he fucks Patty down here all the time.”

“Is he- I mean, is it okay to use it?”

“Eds, of all the fucking things we could be absolutely fucked for doing today, I’m not really worried about stealing a little bit of fucking lube from Stan’s stash,” Richie rolls his eyes before grabbing Eddie’s thigh too hard and pressing his knee up to his chest, using his other hand to rub against Eddie’s hole, leaving him red and wet between the legs before pushing into his warmth.

“Do you know how much I’ve fucking thought about this? How many times I’ve fucking chafed my dick jerking off to the thought of getting my fingers in your little cunt? You’re such a fucking bitch, Eddie, for fuck’s sake. You’re such a dumb fucking bitch. I would fucking strangle you to death if I didn’t fucking love you so much,” Richie growls, and he knows he’s probably being too rough, but the throaty warble that Eddie lets out in response doesn’t make it seem like Eddie minds much.

“Just- Just fuck me, please just fuck me, Richie. I can’t fucking wait anymore, please.”

“I’m going to hurt you.”

“Yeah, please, yeah.”

Richie pulls his fingers out to squirt more lube into his hand to wet his cock, and he’s mesmerized by the crimson against his skin before he presses the head of his cock to Eddie’s hole, and Eddie fucking wails. So he pushes all the way inside in one thrust, and Eddie fucking screams.

“Richie, fuck!”

“Does it hurt, baby?” Richie asks him, grabbing Eddie by the waist before hammering his cock into Eddie’s ass, so hard that he’s sure Eddie’s back is scraping against the dirt underneath him.

“Yes, fuck, it hurts, Richie, it hurts,” Eddie is crying all over again, wrapping his limbs around Richie’s body like he’ll die if Richie leaves.

“Good. I want you to fucking hurt.”

“Richie, please!”

“Please what? What else could you possibly fucking want from me, Eddie?”

“Kiss me, please kiss me,” Eddie begs him, and Richie obliges, smashing their lips together in something akin to pain, and Eddie wraps his tongue around Richie’s like he’s trying to swallow it whole.

Eddie bites him again as he pulls away and lets out a little growl, and the sound of it has Richie dragging him down further underneath himself to fuck into him even harder, and Eddie goes limp underneath him, letting out a long, low moan as his mouth drops open.

“Yeah? There? That’s where it feels good, baby?”

“Don’t stop, please, Richie, please don’t stop, don’t ever stop, please,” Eddie gasps desperately, but he almost sounds like he’s fucking drunk, and pleasure rips down Richie’s spine at the sound of it.

“Your little girlfriend couldn’t ever make you feel like this, could she, baby?”

“No, no, never. Never.”

“And that’s why you didn’t fuck her, isn’t it? Because you were saving yourself for me?”

“Always, always wanted my first to be you. Always you.”

“That’s not what she thought, kitten. You know how I got her here? I left a note in her locker pretending to be you, and I told her you wanted to meet her here so you guys could be alone. And she thought you were gonna come here and fuck her, baby. She thought you were gonna pop her cherry.”

Eddie makes a noise that sounds something like disgust, and Richie’s heart floats at the sound of it.

“But you wouldn’t have, would you kitten? Because all you’ve wanted is this, for your whole fucking life. Just my cock filling up your little pussy, that’s what you’ve needed this whole time. Not your little fucking girlfriend.”

“She- She _disgusts_ me,” Eddie insists, and Richie’s heart is beating so fast that he might fucking die and find out he’s been in heaven this whole time.

“Do you think she’s enjoying the show, baby?” he asks playfully, and Eddie blinks over to her corpse like he’d forgotten she was there, and he angles his hips up to take Richie’s cock deeper into his body, until his balls are slapping against the flesh of Eddie’s ass.

“Who cares, she’s dead.”

Richie can’t help letting out a laugh, and Myra almost looks like she might be laughing, too. Her teeth are showing, at least.

“God, I fucking love you so much.”

“I love you more than fucking anything, Richie. More than fucking anything in my entire life.”

Richie shudders against him, leaning down to cage Eddie’s head in between his arms as he captures his lips in another bruising, bloody kiss.

“Promise me. Promise me you’re mine, you’re mine _forever,_ that you’ll never fucking let anyone else touch you ever again. Promise me that you fucking belong to me,” Richie demands, and Eddie nods frantically against the dirt.

“I promise, I promise. Always, I’ve always belonged to you.”

Richie grabs his knife from next to Eddie’s head and presses it against his throat, just hard enough that a line of red breaks across Eddie’s skin.

“That’s right, baby. And I’ll fucking kill anyone I have to, to make sure you keep that promise,” Richie assures, leaning down to bite Eddie’s earlobe between his teeth. “Even if I have to kill you.”

Eddie screams as he comes between them, mixing his cum with the blood and the lube and the sweat and the everything already caked all over their bodies. Richie fucks him through it and keeps going, and Eddie is babbling underneath him, all limp and docile as he allows Richie to fuck into him like a ragdoll, pressing bruises into his hips that will be there for weeks.

“Please, Richie, please _please_ come in me, please, want it so bad, wanted it forever. Need you to cream me, need you to fucking breed me like a bitch.”

Every muscle in Richie’s body tries to give out all at once as he comes into Eddie as deep as he can get, nearly folding the smaller boy in half to press their hips together as closely as he can, coming with a deep groan that echoes in the air around them.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Eddie.”

“All I’ve ever wanted is to feel you inside of me like this.”

“Eddie, my dick is going to fucking malfunction if you try to get me hard again already.”

“I just love you, I love you so much. I want you to fuck me again already,” Eddie tells him desperately, pulling Richie down for a sloppy kiss as they both try to catch their breaths.

“You gotta- gotta give me 10, at least,” Richie tells him once he pulls away, gently shifting his hips back to pull his cock out of Eddie’s hole.

He’s still all bloody between his ass cheeks, and Richie is mesmerized watching his cum already trying to leak out of Eddie’s hole. He pushes it back in with one bloody finger before slapping Eddie on the ass, earning him a yelp from the other man.

He collapses down onto the dirt floor and pulls Eddie into his chest, and he really, truthfully doesn’t think he’s ever been happier than he is right now. Covered in blood and semen and lying on a dirt floor with a corpse a few feet away, kissing Eddie in his filthy hair and holding his little body against his own.

“What do you think- I mean, what should we do with her?” Eddie asks gently, glancing over at Myra with a grimace on his face.

“Keep her around for a while, probably, since you got off on it so hard.”

“Hey!”

“Just saying. Could be a nice addition to the clubhouse. Stanley’s always talking about _elevating the décor_ or whatever the fuck.”

“Pretty sure a dead body is not an elevation.”

“Name me another ragtag group of teens with a rotting corpse in their clubhouse. Bet you can’t. That makes it exclusive, which automatically makes it elite.”

“Well, in this fucking town, who knows,” Eddie sighs, and Richie is surprised that he hasn’t started panicking yet. He figured it would have happened about 2 seconds after he came, but Eddie is almost sleepily resting his head against Richie’s filthy chest.

“I don’t know what to do about the body. I didn’t think that far ahead.”

Eddie lets out a yawn, snuggling in closer to Richie’s warmth.

“Well, the river has been pretty high lately, so we can just tie some big boulders to her and let her sink in the river. The cops might find her bones eventually, but by then, they won’t be able to tell how she died. I mean, it’s not like the Derry Police Department has ever made a genuine effort to find a missing person, so I don’t think we need to worry about search parties. But I’m assuming your DNA is probably all over her, so the river should help to wash that away, too. And we also need to take a dip. We’re fucking disgusting.”

Richie is shocked into silence, and Eddie lifts his head to look at him in confusion.

“What?”

“I just- Nothing, I just didn’t expect Mr. fucking Criminal Mastermind over here to be so casual about this.”

Eddie shrugs, letting out a sigh. “I didn’t think I would be either. But I sort of wanted to kill her myself. You should have heard the things she said about you when you weren’t around.”

“Let me take a stab: psychotic faggot freak, right?”

“So you had a little chat beforehand, I see.”

“Well, to be fair, Eds, I can’t really say in good faith that she wasn’t onto something.”

It takes the both of them to drag her body up out of the clubhouse, which is worse for wear itself. Eddie assures that they’ll worry about cleaning it up after they get rid of the body first, and Richie isn’t in a position to argue with him.

They decide to take their clothes off so they can burn all of them once it’s dark outside. Eddie insists they absolutely _have_ to wait until nighttime if he’s expected to run home in his fucking underwear, which Richie gets, but it seems like the least of their concerns right now.

He watches Eddie strip his dirty clothes off and can’t help staring at this beautiful boy, this fucking filthy, disgusting boy who can’t ever fucking leave him, because he’s an accomplice to murder. Who never wants to leave him, because he’s just as in love with Richie as Richie is with him. Just as obsessed. Just as sick.

“You gonna get naked too, or stand there all day so someone can come and find us dragging a dead body into the river?”

“Sorry, just got distracted staring at you.”

“I’m fucking filthy.”

“Yeah, and it’s so fucking hot.”

Richie takes his clothes off as well and Eddie is staring at him, too; particularly at his leg, and the declaration of love that he’d forgotten he carved there.

“You know, I really did consider confessing after I noticed you’d carved our initials into my bedframe,” Eddie admits softly, and Richie shrugs, leaning down to grab Myra by one of her feet to drag her into the water.

“Yeah, well, if you had, we could have avoided all of this.”

“I’m- I’m kind of glad that we didn’t,” Eddie admits, then claps a hand over his mouth as Richie laughs. “God, was that fucked up?”

“Extremely, Eddie my love.”

Once Myra disappears under the surface of the water, they make their way back to shore, sitting in the shallows of the water to finish scrubbing the blood from their skin.

“I really love you, you know.”

“You fucking better.”

“Do you think that’s gonna scar?”

“I donno, I hope so. I might go over it even deeper just to make sure. I’ve carved our initials in every possible fucking place I can think of; I figured myself was the perfect place to end it.”

“Well… are you sure?”

“What do you mean?”

“I kinda want you to carve them into me, too. Somewhere that my mom will see.”

**Author's Note:**

> Well, there you have it folks. Hope you enjoyed yourselves along the way. This is when I find out who my real ride or dies are tbh


End file.
